Magic Mud

Happy New Year! :) I do have some 2012 goals I need to write up a post on later. Quite a bit of that includes goals with Connor and one area is arts/crafts/projects. We haven't done as much of that since moving to Colorado.

I pulled out my toddler activity book and found a simple recipe for something called "Magic Mud", which was described as seeming like a solid but not really. Weird! All you do is mix cornstarch and water to form a paste. You can add food coloring to make it more visually appealing. I thought it might be like play dough, but no. It's just WEIRD! But weird in a very cool way. :)

It looks very runny and liquidy, but if you pour it onto the table it hardens so much that you can touch it and it won't leave a dent. Connor rolled his car on it and it didn't leave a dent either! Very smooth. But if you scrape it up into your hand, it basically melts and gets runny again.

 I finally called Nick in to check it out because it was just so darn weird and neat! He started to play with it and was totally intrigued as well. It is just fascinating...

Connor was very into it and very serious for some reason. :) He played with the magic mud for a long time!

It got messy but being it's weird, magical self it was actually very easy to clean up.

It kept changing form and going from solid to liquid to solid over and over for the whole afternoon. Amazing. Maybe someone scientific (unlike me!) knows how this works. All I've ever used cornstarch for is to make pudding and thicken soups. Cornstarch is cheap and so this makes for a very inexpensive, fun little project! It's not exactly an art project since you don't make anything, you just play with it. I think it was filed under "rainy day activities". :)

This was a winner and I encourage you to give it a try. As you can see, it's fun for all ages. :)